Henry Ford?

Henry Ford is a program that is probably on its way up. In the recent past they had a lot of faculty turnover and were without a chairman for quite awhile. There did not seem to be much of an emphasis on education, either in terms of formalized lectures or intra-operative teaching. However, the residents get a lot of autonomy at HF, and most cases are done predominantly by senior residents. For the most part the residents seem to get along well and are friendly. Currently about 1/5 of the residents are women, and there are some foreign grads in the bunch, so it is fairly diverse. In terms of coverage, trauma and sports are the strongest. Joints is on the up as new faculty are being recruited. The new chairman is a tumor guy, but I don't know how much he is planning on operating right now. Currently peds, tumor, and spine are kind of weak as the residents are farmed out for those. For peds they go to Gillette in Minnessota and Beaumont. For tumor and spine they go to Beaumont.

That being said, they just recently got a new chairman, Dr. Parsons, and I think he will improve the program. He seems interested in education and they are recruiting a lot of new faculty. Also, HF is opening a new hospital in the suburbs in around 2009 which will help support some of the new recruits.

I'm one of the Henry Ford residents. Feel free to PM me with any questions. I replied to Stanford_Playah directly, here's the scoop:

Dr. Parsons (huge tumor name and ex-military) began this month as our new chairman after a long search for the right person. We're all really excited about this improvement to an already solid program.

Intern year is pretty cush. We do 3 months of ortho, a month of rads/rheum, anesthesia, medicine, plastics, gen surg trauma, ped surg, vascular, 2 months SICU. All the interns got to do a total knee by themselves by the end of last year. Everyone treats you really well, and the scut is minimal. You definitely get into the OR when you're on ortho, and as much as you want to during other rotations.

2nd and 3rd year are the junior years. There's lots of variety and you learn the most on the trauma rotations (4 months 2nd year, 2 months 3rd year). The 4th and 5th years get comfortable running rooms (staff is always present) and leading the services. Everyone seems to go on to do fellowships in the speciality they desire. Off the top of my head, we have a guys going to do joints in Boston, spine at UCLA, trauma at Vanderbilt the next couple years.

The staff are all very involved with teaching, obviously some more than others. We have at least 3 trauma, 3 joints, 6 sports, 2 foot/ankle, 2 spine, 2 trauma, 2 hand and 1 tumor (with one on the way) attendings. Henry Ford doesn't have a pediatrics residency or in-house peds (which is good in some ways), so you rotate at Gillette and Beaumont for that. They considered moving the peds rotation to Detroit, but everyone raves about the Gillette experience. We probably won't be going to Beaumont for tumor or spine much longer now that Dr. Parsons is here and we have a new spine attending.

Every Wednesday morning, we have 4 hours of didactics, which includes Grand Rounds, M&M, anatomy dissections, saw bone labs, staff and resident lectures. The individual services have their own specialty lectures as well.

The best thing about this program is definitely the camaraderie. We're like a big family, seriously. As an intern, I spent Thanksgiving with two of the 4th years. Three of us went to Vegas with some of the surgery residents for "spring break" in March. We play basketball, soccer, football together... with the attendings. A bunch of us work out at the same gym (so ortho - I know). I didn't know a soul when I moved to Detroit, but it definitely helps that the guys (and gals) in my program really get along well within and in between classes.

That's an overview. Feel free to ask any additional specifics.

JS